UPPER ELEMENTARY THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT AND TEACHER MISCONCEPTIONS OF THE INTERIOR OF THE EARTH

Student and teacher conceptions of the interior of the Earth have been the topic of much research. This investigation looks at identifying misconceptions from students in upper elementary through high school grades and their teachers. Previous studies have focused on student or teacher generated diagrams of Earth’s interior. Steer et al. (2005) focused on addressing college-level student misconceptions based on assessment of student-generated models of Earth’s interior. Their findings indicate that the majority of students had a rudimentary understanding of Earth’s interior and were unable to correctly identify the individual layers or draw them to scale. King (2000) noted that “nearly half the teachers asked had no real concept of the scale of the crust relative to the whole Earth” (p. 61). Our study is unique in that it looks at both elementary through high school students’ and teachers’ misconceptions.

We asked 359 Pennsylvania students and 17 Pennsylvania teachers to answer two questions related to Earth’s interior: one question required test takers to choose one of five provided illustrations of Earth’s interior; the following question required test takers to describe in words Earth’s interior based on their choice of illustration. The responses suggest several common themes of misconceptions among the students: those based on scale, those based on incorrect number of layers, those based on the arrangement of layers, those based on their explanations of the diagrams, and general confusion with the test questions. Teacher misconceptions were similar to student misconceptions but also included confusion of physical versus chemical layers of Earth’s interior.

Responses are being analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively based on the grade levels of the students and the grades that the teachers instruct. Our preliminary results suggest that misconceptions are held by both students and teachers throughout various grade levels when it comes to understanding the interior of the Earth. Teachers who hold misconceptions may be unable to correct student misconceptions thus allowing misconceptions to persist.